DANIEL BROCKMAN

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Jetting Many would argue that, in the world of creativity, there is a fine line between genius and insanity. The best artists, so the argument goes, usually straddle the line, often relying on the latter to achieve the former.

Twin pleasure A decade ago, a Dresden Dolls fan might have required a sentence or two to describe his or her favorite band. These days, the solo career of head Doll Amanda Palmer needs a multi-page explanation for each new quarterly phase.

The horror-punk legend on Deth Red Sabaoth , comics, and vast global conspiracies There was a moment, while I was on hold on the phone as Glenn Danzig was being summoned by his publicist, where I was a tad intimidated. And not just because I was about to talk about one of the more legendary and divisive figures in the history of punk and metal.

Welcome to our many small worlds No, it's not your imagination: things are getting smaller. Or at least, it seems that way in the funhouse-mirror world of modern music, where the semi-demise of the major-label factory has colluded with the anti-star obsession of the underground to produce a chasing of microgenres into mazes of musical self-selection.

The National come back from the drawing board In a perfect world, a great moment in music would come accompanied by a sense of grace, as if it had traveled far and long to reach you here and now. In short: great art is often the product of a lot of work — and work isn’t all that exciting.

Shelflife (2010) When today’s musical magpies look back to the ’80s to steal the sonic shiny items that catch their ears’ fancy, they gravitate toward the Day-Glo sheen of that era’s false promise and anthemic vacuousness. Thieves Like Us, however, are not that breed of pilferer.

Live free or rock As he lay in a Texas hospital bed in March, being treated for the disease to which he would eventually succumb, Ronald James Padavona, better known to the world as heavy-metal legend Ronnie James Dio, gave an interview to a local TV station. “Cancer? I’ll kick the hell out of you,” he declared, before throwing the devil horns.

Fiction (2010) The battlefield of ’00s electro-tantrum spazz-ravers is littered with the corpses of those who burned too brightly at the outset and, in the process, burned out any interest in a sustained career of noisemaking.

Metal, refined and redefined by Krallice “I’d like you to clarify a bit more exactly what you mean by ‘go off the rails.’ ” I’m speaking to Nick McMaster, bassist for Krallice — I hesitate to say “interviewing,” because moments like this, where he’s asking me for clarification, make it hard to say who is the interviewer and who is the subject.

The Church, live at the Armory in Somerville, April 21, 2010 The night's entertainment was, as they say, high concept: on the eve of their 30th anniversary, Aussie new wave lifers The Church played 23 songs, one from each of their albums, in reverse chronological order, beginning with last year's Untitled #23 and ending with 1980's self-titled debut (in the U.S., it was eventually released as Of Skins and Heart).

Expanding definitions at the New England Metal and Hardcore Fest Let’s cut to the chase — metal is back. And not just as a popular musical style, but as a subculture, freely seeping into the mainstream in a variety of strange ways, from the bullet belts you see on a dance floor to the devil horns being thrown by everybody and your uncle’s band.

Beach House avoid the literal “The abstract has been very good to us.” I am communicating via e-mail with the two members of Baltimore’s dreamy pop choir Beach House, and to be honest, I don’t know which one of them made that statement.